CELEBRATING your 100th birthday is an incredible milestone - and one Worcester woman has followed in the footsteps of her mother and grandmother to reach the landmark age.

Ruth Taylor will be celebrating her centenary with neighbours and church friends at Cranham Evangelical Church tomorrow (Saturday).

Mrs Taylor, who has lived in Cartmel Close, Warndon, for more than 50 years, puts her long life down to keeping active up to her 80s and having a good group of friends and neighbours.

"I don't know if it runs in the family but my mother lived to 104 and my grandmother was 100, I think.

"Until I was about 80 I did stay active. My husband worked on the railway so we were free to go to different parts of the world.

"I couldn't survive without my neighbours or my church.

"The people of Cranham Evangelical Church have been a godsend to men. Whenever I've been ill they've taken care of me, if anything is worrying me I go to one of them.

"Also, my neighbours Gill and Lol, Ray, Pam all look after me."

Mrs Taylor has lived in Worcester her entire life having been born in her grandmother's house in Sling Lane, Hindlip, and attended Hindlip School.

Her good health came from her mother, Ethel Jones, who lived until she was 104, as well as her grandmother who reached her 100th birthday too.

Sadly, she has no recollection of her father who died while fighting in World War One when she was just a baby.

"I never knew my father, my mother had his photograph but I can't remember him.

"He went to war and he never came back."

At 14 she left school and started working in Barbourne at the glove factory before working as a kitchen maid at a house in Edgbaston and also at King's School in Worcester.

She met her husband George during that time after going to school together - though her late husband had remembered her but she could not remember him.

The pair had two children, Gill, who passed away in her 30s, and Tony, who died last year.

A well as today's party, Mrs Taylor is also looking forward to receiving her letter from the Queen and a letter from the Secretary of State.